


The Reluctant Daughter

by imadra_blue



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Canon - Movie, Character Study, Family Drama, Father and Daughter Bonding, Fluff and Angst, Force Ghosts, Gen, One Shot, Post-RotJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imadra_blue/pseuds/imadra_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the space of always, Anakin watches over Leia and seeks her forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reluctant Daughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luthe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthe/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Luthe! This started out one thing and turned into another. Takes place after RotJ, but in an alternate universe to that of the post-RotJ EU.

While Luke seemed infinitely understanding, Leia seemed filled with infinite condemnation. Her memory ran longer than Luke's. The Force rang hollow and empty when Anakin drew near to her. Anakin's spirit was as unwelcome as Darth Vader had been to her. So he often backed away to where the Force rang safe and whole. Anakin could not entirely blame her. He knew better than anyone what he had done. Even though he knew he deserved far worse than Leia's disgust and revulsion, he could not stop seeking her forgiveness. The Force would not fully accept him until he had earned it, for Leia was part of the Force. So long as she rejected him, he was forced to remain separate, apart, individual. Obi-Wan, and Yoda, and even Qui-Gon guided Anakin along the Way, but only he could complete the journey towards being one with the Force.

Leia could see Anakin when he manifested near her; he knew she could. He could see her gaze snap to him and linger, clearly recognizing him, but then she would snap it away, just as quickly. No matter how long he spoke to her, tried to explain, tried to apologize, Leia would not cast him a second glance. Even when Luke spoke on his behalf, her expression remained as cold and immovable as Obi-Wan's had once been when Anakin had disappointed him as a boy.

Anakin asked Obi-Wan to speak to Leia about him, but Obi-Wan refused. Though Obi-Wan had forgiven him, embraced him, raised him to the same Way that he walked in the Force, he would not speak for Anakin.

"You must earn Leia's forgiveness yourself, Anakin," Obi-Wan said without a voice, his being radiating a wisdom that Anakin never recalled him possessing in life. "I cannot earn it for you, even if I wished to."

So Obi-Wan trained Leia in the Force, guiding her as he once had Luke, but he never mentioned Anakin's name. A small part of Anakin's being reverberated red each time he saw his daughter with his old Master. Leia responded to Obi-Wan's presence the way Anakin wished she would his. It would take Luke's gentle words for Anakin to glow entirely blue again, to find peace again. It was always Luke who calmed him, who guided him in ways that even the Jedi Masters could not.

Leia bore Padmé's shape and form, even wore white jumpsuits not dissimilar from Padmé's, but when she gripped a blue lightsaber not unlike Anakin's old one, wielding it in the same form he had once used, Anakin wondered if perhaps something of him had escaped inside her. Perhaps even his anger. Even now, without form and shape, only a presence and an image, he still struggled with his anger.

"It's not fair," Anakin would snarl at Luke whenever Anakin reverberated red in the Force, thinking of how his daughter idolized Obi-Wan, but despised him. "I'm still her father."

Luke would stare back at him with the same expression Padmé had always given him when he spoke out of turn. "The man Leia considers her father died, years ago, along with her entire planet."

And then Anakin would recall that day on the Death Star, when he was still Darth Vader. He had pulled Leia back with metal hands, somehow feeling her tension and anxiety in her shoulders despite that he had no true feeling. He had known then, as she had fallen back against him when Alderaan was blown to dust before her eyes, that she was strong in the Force. What he had not suspected then was that she was his child. Or perhaps he had, and chose to ignore it, as he had chosen to ignore many other things. She had inherited Padmé's face, plain as a Tatooine day, but Darth Vader had refused to contemplate why. Perhaps if he had, Anakin might have hastened his redemption and saved Leia from the misery he had inflicted upon her.

But he had not.

At the end, Anakin Skywalker had only the strength to save one child, not both. He rescued Luke from the Emperor, but his daughter's last memories of him were of torture and stolen love. The way she had trembled when the torture droid had done its work on her still haunted his being, staining him with red. At least she had not broken. At least there was that.

Leia's will had not broken before him then, and it would not break before him now. She continued to ignore him when he manifested near her. Eventually Anakin learned to accept it as his punishment, for her rejection of him stung more than anything a torture droid could have produced.

…

Years passed for Luke and Leia, though eternity remained the same for Anakin. The Force grew and expanded around him, or perhaps he grew and expanded with it. In time, Anakin could not tell where the edges of him and of the Force began and ended, but he knew that was as it should be. He felt more at peace, even around Leia. He reverberated red less and less.

In the decades that passed, Leia had married—to the smuggler captain Han Solo, though Anakin remained convinced she was too good for the likes of him—and had a daughter of her own. Fine lines had crept around Leia's eyes, and a streak of pure white shot through her ornate braided hair. At Luke's side as his partner and equal, they founded a new Jedi Order, its ranks filled with many orphans left behind after the final rebellions against the Empire. Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and even Anakin himself guided Luke and Leia, though Leia still refused to acknowledge Anakin's existence. Leia grew strong in the Force, as strong as her brother, and acted as ambassador to the new Republic's Senate.

Between her duties as Jedi and as ambassador, Leia had little time to spend with her husband or her child. Quiet moments were few and far between, which is perhaps why Anakin eventually found himself drawn to one. Leia stood on the balcony of her Coruscant home, watching her daughter, Breha Padmé, practice lightsaber katas in the tree-lined courtyard below. Expecting nothing, Anakin manifested nearby to enjoy the moment.

At first, Leia ignored him, as she always did. Young Breha had not grown strong enough yet to see Anakin. As Anakin prepared to fade back into the Force, Leia half-turned in his direction. Anakin went perfectly still, hoping he would not destroy this delicate moment, and studied his daughter. Age had eroded Padmé's likeness from her face, and now Anakin could see himself more clearly in her, all but for her eyes. Oddly, those reminded him of Obi-Wan, haunted by the past but fixed firmly in the present.

"Hello," Anakin whispered through the Force, as gently as the songs of ice crystals on Fendemire.

Leia turned away, as if to ignore him again, but then she spoke. "Hello," she responded, her voice hoarse from the frequent speeches she delivered in the Senate.

Anakin's manifestation winked in and out, for in that moment he transcended himself. Though he lacked a physical body, all that was his existence—all that was the Force—became flooded with a relief and joy so profound they were almost painful. Leia gazed in his direction as he reappeared. Her brown eyes now seemed depthless and unfathomable, like the Force itself.

There were so many things that Anakin wanted to tell her, so many apologies he wanted to make, but he could not think to express them. Instead, he stepped up beside her and gazed down at Breha, her long brown ponytail whipping about as she performed her katas with an accuracy that did the Skywalker line proud.

"Why do you not join her?" Anakin finally managed to ask of his daughter.

Leia half-smiled, her gaze now trained on Breha's every movement. "Because it is time I let her go. She'll be a woman soon and must stand on her own two feet. As much as I want to cling to her, as much as I want her to constantly affirm I mean as much to her as she does me, I cannot. She will not grow that way. Every tree on Alderaan had to learn to grow out of its parents' shade, or it would not live."

"Oh," was all Anakin could think to say at first. The more he thought of Leia's words, the more it seemed as if Leia spoke about him as much as herself. He could not say if Leia meant that intentionally, but he knew he should take that meaning nonetheless, for it rang true in the Force. "But what if she needs you?" he asked.

Leia turned to him fully, her arms now wrapped around herself. She had thickened over the years, and a new elegance had developed alongside the dignity she had possessed since her youth. She studied Anakin's manifestation with eyes as clear as Shmi Skywalker's had once been when bidding him farewell. "I will always be there for her, whenever she needs me. And I will make sure she knows that. I have not been a perfect mother, but it is my duty to support her and love her, even from afar."

"Always," Anakin agreed, hoping Leia understood he meant to do the same for his daughter.

Leia bent forward, peering down at her feet, appearing oddly girlish for a woman who had always seemed wise beyond her years, even when still a child sitting by Bail Organa in the Imperial Senate. "I can never forgive Darth Vader for his crimes, but I find that I can now forgive Anakin Skywalker—and even thank him for always watching over me, even when it was difficult for him."

Anakin smiled and bowed. His daughter had finally accepted him as a father. For the first time in his existence, alive or dead, he felt entirely at peace. He somehow knew that he would never again reverberate red. Blue suffused his being. He had fully become one with the Force, for the missing part now finally accepted him. He felt suffused with a life that was both infinite and eternal.

Leia nodded at him, her lips ever so slightly curved upwards, and turned back to watching her daughter. And Anakin continued to watch his.

_End._


End file.
